Wheeler Spreads Anti-semitism by Misleading Statements, N.Y. Paper Charges

The charge that Senator Wheeler is helping spread anti-Semitism by misleading statements about Jews, is made today in an editorial in the New York Herald Tribune which takes issue with the Senator for his public assertion yesterday that anti-Semitic feeling was growing in America because “a lot of people believe the Jews are trying to get us into the war.”

“This is an utterly wrongheaded and misleading statement of the case,” the editorial says. “There are many groups in this country whose members are predominantly in favor of some particular form of action – or inaction – in the present crisis. The factors which condition their attitudes are by no means only racial – they may simply be a matter of geography. In this there is no cause of reproach, no matter what side of the controversy the group may choose, so long as it conducts itself honestly within the frame of the American system. It is, however, dangerous and un-American to use group labels carelessly.

“This plain truth applies to the Jews as well as to any other group, and it is the duty of men like Senator Wheeler and Senator Nye to urge it upon all who listen to them, instead of using the threat of acute anti-Semitism as a whip to lash their opponents into line with their own policies. It does not mean that individual Jews or Jewish organizations are above criticism for whatever action they may take or thoughts they may express. It simply means that the Jews as a group must not be accused – on no evidence whatever – of possessing greater power than they are legitimately entitled to in our republic, and thereby made the scapegoat for whatever an uninformed minority in this country chooses to consider a national evil.